Film Review: Gore Whore (1994)

SYNOPSIS:
A lab assistant steals a very important secret formula from her boss. The miffed doctor hires a down-on-his-luck PI (nice hair though) to hunt down and find the assistant and his formula. Complications arise when it becomes evident that the girl is actually a resurrected hooker who needs a constant supply of blood to stay alive. Between the zombies and the dead hooker (not in a trunk) PI Chase must keep all his wits about him to stay alive.

REVIEW:

As it kicks off with a photographic montage of a series of bound and gagged models (tied in an almost innocent, Betty Page sort of way) one might expect Gore Whore to be little more than a feature-length bondage video with a dodgier title than most. Then there’s the giant black dildo slowly rotating in the middle of the screen. I’m not entirely sure what exactly Gore Whore is, but it’s certainly not the movie the title credits will lead you to believe it is. It’s completely irrelevant, save for the dildo, which will become an important plot point later.

After that – a young woman slowly stripping in front of a man who looks distractingly like Matt Smith (the current incarnation of Doctor Who’s Doctor) before she straps him to the bed and bites off his lovelength. I’d like to see even the Doctor regenerate from that. While the big black dildo does return (it’s a syringe actually) there’s a disappointing lack of bondage in the film. In fact, for a film called Gore Whore, there’s also a relative lack of gore and whores. Plenty of gratuitous nudity though – and an interesting approach to necromancy.

Whatever else Gore Whore might be missing (where the heck is my bondage?) there are zombies, lots of dancing, a little punk music and a man with long hair who wears a trenchcoat. There’s a Night of the Living Dead inspired sequence in a graveyard, a car chase and lots of dance sequences though, so it’s not as if the film is entirely without its merits. There’s also a man masturbating in a car as a zombie attacks, and that giant black dildo syringe. With the bright yellow resurrection medicine inside, it occasionally resembles a P*rnographic version of Re-Animator. There’s even a scene in which the decapitated head sits watching while his body tries to kill a man. I don’t know about you, but I think Re-Animator was definitely missing a scene in which Hebert West revived the dead by shoving his phallic syringe right up a man’s jacksy. That it ends with our hero booting said head into a lake is reason enough to love Gore Whore.

Ugly, cheap and with horrible actors, the film could use any love it can get. There’s plenty of reason not to enjoy it. As a rule, when a movie’s plot keywords on IMDb include “female full frontal nudity” you should probably give it a miss. With its lengthy, exploitative scenes of female nudity, it won’t disappoint in that respect, but you might as well just watch a skin flick, if you’re that bothered. It looks as though most of it was filmed in a friend’s flat, with the occasional excursion to the park, local graveyard or warehouse to shake things up. There’s some attempt at action in the world’s slowest car chase (it’s hard to tell whether it’s filmed in slow motion or the car is just driving really slowly) and a comically awful flipped car. As it tips, you can actually see that it’s been completely stripped. Much like the ladies of the film. And the actors (of their dignity).

Cheap and nasty though it may be, Gore Whore is ultimately all done in the best of spirits. There are a few good gore effects, an ironically brilliant story and a hero that could have been played by Nicolas Cage without missing a beat. Gore Whore may not deliver on all that it promises, but there’s enough of everything else that it doesn’t even matter. There’s plenty of crap bondage on YouTube and Dailymotion if you’re that bothered, anyway.